Outliers

This column was written by CBS News Early Show Co-Anchor Harry Smith.Malcolm Gladwell has a new book.

Yes, the man who wrote Blink and The Tipping Point has penned another bestseller. This one is called Outliers.

Many times when you are studying norms, there are the statistical aberrations which lie outside the preponderance of data. Those are the outliers, and in the case of Gladwell's book, they are the people who tend to be really, really good at something.

And Gladwell attempts to explain why. For instance, he found that many of the really good hockey players on an All Star team in Canada were born in the beginning months of the year.

Hockey programs tend to have date and age specific cutoff points so it stands to reason that older kids in a given year are a little bigger and stronger. Well, that keeps repeating itself with more attention and more skating time.

The book says greatness has a lot to do with luck. Being born in the right month even.

I kept wondering what happened to kids born in September. Do they become prime minister?